Dear Commons Community,

President Obama announced yesterday the resignation of his education secretary, Arne Duncan, who will be replaced by John B. King Jr., a former commissioner of education in New York State. Duncan has been controversial to say the least mainly because he used the promise of Race to the Top funding to strong-arm states to adopt his policies centering on the Common Core, standardized testing, teacher evaluation, and charter schools.  While President Obama praised his service, Duncan has drawn mixed reviews as the Education Secretary. As reported in the New York Times:

“Mr. Duncan’s critics are an unusual coalition from the left and right.

I think history will show that this time period was the apex of federal authority in education,” said Michael J. Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning education policy group in Washington. “That’s in part because there’s a sense among members of Congress but also among people in the education field that he abused his power,” he said, referring to Mr. Duncan.

Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust, a left-leaning nonprofit, said Mr. Duncan’s aggressive push to introduce new tests and teacher evaluations was bound to create a backlash that would handcuff his successors. Anyone who pushed that hard, she said, “was going to be a villain no matter what.”

“There’s no question that the Department of Education’s fixation on charters and high-stakes testing has not worked,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, in a statement.”

John King is a Duncan acolyte and will continue all of Duncan’s policies in the year left in Obama’s presidency. As commissioner of education in New York State, Mr. King oversaw the rollout of the Common Core standards, as well as more difficult standardized tests intended to measure student progress on those standards, despite protests from parents and teachers.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Jeb Bush while responding to a question about the shootings at Umpqua College that resulted in the deaths of nine innocent victims,  commented that “stuff happens … there’s always a crisis”.  As reported by the Associated Press:

“Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush says he’s opposed to new federal gun laws as a response to the mass shooting at an Oregon community college.

At a forum in South Carolina, Bush said Friday he learned as Florida governor that “stuff happens … there’s always a crisis, and the impulse is to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

“I think the American people should hear that and make their own judgment.” President Obama

Bush later defended his use of the phrase “stuff happens.” He says he was speaking generally about tragedies, not Thursday’s shooting that left 10 people dead, including the gunman.

Asked to react to Bush’s statement, President Barack Obama says, “I think the American people should hear that and make their own judgment.”

Obama added that voters “can decide whether or not they consider that stuff happening.”

Jeb Bush must have gotten his script from the NRA’s Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Many businesses in Sweden are having employees work fewer hours with the goal of becoming more productive. The move also comes in a bid to boost workers’ private time with family.  As reported in the Associated Press:

Toyota centers in the country apparently made the change 13 years ago. Last year, businesses in Stockholm also introduced a six-hour work day. In an interview with Fast Company, Linus Feldt, CEO of app developer Filimundus, said, “The eight-hour work day is not as effective as one would think.”

Feldt continued, “To stay focused on a specific work task for eight hours is a huge challenge. In order to cope, we mix in things and pauses to make the work day more endurable. At the same time, we are having it hard to manage our private life outside of work.”

Fortune magazine previously wrote about several other companies in Gothenburg which made the switch earlier this year.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Following the shootings at Umpqua College that resulted in the deaths of nine innocent victims and the gunman, President Obama said yesterday that we have become “numb” and that he is powerless to do anything.  As reported in the New York Times:  

“President Obama’s rage about gun massacres, building for years, spilled out Thursday night as he acknowledged his own powerlessness to prevent another tragedy and pleaded with voters to force change themselves.

“So tonight, as those of us who are lucky enough to hug our kids a little closer are thinking about the families who aren’t so fortunate,” the president said in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, named for a man severely wounded by a would-be assassin’s bullet, “I’d ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws, and to save these lives and let these people grow up.”

Mr. Obama admitted that he was unable to do anything to prevent such tragedies by himself. And he did little to try to hide the anger and frustration that have deepened as he returns again and again to the White House lectern in the wake of a deadly mass shooting.

Mr. Obama took a veiled swipe at the National Rifle Association, which has successfully fought most limits on gun use and manufacture and has pushed through legislation in many states making gun ownership far easier. “And I would particularly ask America’s gun owners who are using those guns properly, safely, to hunt for sport, for protecting their families, to think about whether your views are being properly represented by the organization that suggests it is speaking for you,” he said.O

On Thursday afternoon, police officers secured the scene of a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore.

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the N.R.A., declined to respond to Mr. Obama, saying that it was the organization’s policy “not to comment until all the facts are known.” Wayne LaPierre, the organization’s executive vice president, declared after the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

On Thursday night, Mr. Obama said that given the frequency of mass shootings, people had “become numb to th,is.”

A sad, sorrowful state of affairs!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The latest ranking of the world’s best universities released Wednesday shows the United States’ traditional lead has slipped a bit.

The Times Higher Education’s annual ranking of the top 200 universities worldwide includes 63 American institutions, down from 74 the year before. The U.S. still has 14 of the top 20 schools, however. 

Times Higher Education, a London-based magazine, credited America’s slip to a “surge of innovative European and Chinese schools.” The European Union and China have also been making new major investments in their universities for much of the past decade This year’s rankings are the most inclusive, looking at 800 institutions, and refined aspects of their methodology, explained on their website.

The top twenty- five universities are listed below.

Tony

The top 25 universities in the world in 2015-16, according to Times Higher Education: